


red sands and a god

by Omeganixtra



Series: Destiny Fictober 2019 [23]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Fictober 2019, alluded hanky-panky, except for cayde, insomnia strikes again, it's not specified, kissing towards the end of it, the guardian has issues and no one to talk to about anything, they sort of kinda maybe live together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2021-01-04 02:04:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21189764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omeganixtra/pseuds/Omeganixtra
Summary: “I will have you know that I am an excellent superior, thank you very much,” Cayde sniffs delicately as he secures his grip around her hips and stands. “Now, I have a Guardian to put to bed, if you don’t mind.”





	red sands and a god

**Author's Note:**

> day 23: “You can’t give more than yourself.”

Cayde is no stranger to nightmares. Neither is he a stranger to insomnia rearing her ugly head and screeching at him until he’s up and about, preferably with a bottle of some of the strongest, unholiest liquor that he scrounge up in a pinch.

And no matter how much he _loathes_ it, he has slowly become rather familiar with a busted window in his living room and the scent of tea filling his housing unit.

He looks at the huddled shape sitting on his couch and _sighs_.

“Listen, Mee, this ain’t healthy,” he starts and places a hand on her shoulder. He pretends not to wince when it jerks in surprise at his touch. “Come to sleep.”

“Please, make her stop this,” her Ghost begs him as it bursts into existence and Cayde lets out a groan. “She won’t _rest_!”

“Mee,” Cayde repeats, but is ignored. He frowns, narrows his eyes. “_Meera_.”

She keeps looking straight at the mountains of reports and halfway scrolled-through datapads that surround her. When Cayde picks one up, the few words that he recognizes are ‘WARMIND’, ‘MARS’ and ‘BRAY’. The rest is entirely in academic and he simply throws in the towel before even _attempting_ to give that shit a go.

Oh, stars…

“For fuck’s sake, Blue,” Cayde growls and jumps over the back of the sofa, effectively scattering about a few dozen datapads onto the floor. They flicker out as different interfaces intersect with each other and that is the first acknowledgement that Meera even gives.

She raises her eyes from whatever it is that she has been reading and narrows her eyes at him, as if he is a petulant child poking away at his parents’ work, rather than a centuries-old robot from a bygone age of glory and prosperity.

“Don’t you give me that look, young lady,” he snaps and yanks a datapad out of her grasp. “You should _not_ be doing this right now.”

“But I have to,” she croaks out before reaching for the datapad in his hand. Cayde moves it further away from her. “Cayde, I have a responsi—”

“This ain’t something that you need to be doin’, Meera,” Cayde interrupts without a beat and his free hand comes up to curl around her shoulder. “This is Vanguard business, you _know _this.”

“The Commander—”

“Zavala can quite frankly stick this particular order where the Sun doesn’t shine,” he cuts in once more and ignores the outraged look in his protégé’s eyes. She can judge him all she wants, his opinions on this ain’t shifting anytime soon. “And _you_ need to learn when to say no.”

“Cayde, I woke up _Rasputin_,” she hisses. “Nothing like this has happened since the Collapse! Every single thing, every single interaction that I’ve had with the Warmind needs to be documented, it needs to be reported!”

“You don’t need to work yourself ragged in order to do that, though,” he shakes his head at her reasoning. Something’s definitely not right here. “You hidin’ something from me?”

At the very least she has the decency to look ashamed.

“I—I can’t—”

“You can’t what? Talk ‘bout it? Zavala fill your ears with codings and phrasings and classified information now? Thought that you were a Hunter, not a damn Titan.”

“I _am_ a Hunter, Cayde!” she wails suddenly, and he freezes.

He did _not _expect this reaction.

“I am a Hunter and all of this is… is…” she fumbles for her words as her hands run through her hair, making it stand up in a mess of frizzled curls. “It’s fucking _bullshit_! I can’t talk with _him_ as he’s neck-deep in meetings and damage control and keeps speaking about the responsibilities that I have, given my association with what happened on Mars. I can’t talk with Ikora, because—oh fuck’s sake, _you know why_! And I can’t even talk about with _you_, because Traveler forbid that the entire Vanguard knows about what the Commander is doing on the ass end of Mars without warning!”

She is standing by the end of her tirade with tears running down her cheeks and her hair sticking up like a right disaster.

Cayde just wants to _hug _her.

“I saw a Worm God,” she whispers and her arms cross. “I woke up a Warmind and I saw _Xol_ and it _terrified_ me. Zaval—the Commander said not to speak of it, said that I was not to let _anyone else _know about this, but I keep seeing it every time that I try to sleep. I can’t get its voice out of my head or the way that its magic felt on my skin, and it feels like I can’t breathe!”

“Easy now,” Cayde soothes and reaches up, carefully, to draw her back down onto the couch.

She goes without resisting. At this point she is more of a hysterical woman than the fear-inducing horror of a Guardian who has felled gods and made kings tremble in her wake.

“What you did, Meera… it was more than we should ever have asked of you. Zavala should have sent you packing the moment that he got to Mars, not let Bray drag you through the shitshow that was happening up there.”

“But Ana needed—”

“Bray could have gotten help if she had gone through the right channels instead of goin’ off on some harebrained adventure she had cooked up herself. It wasn’t fair to you, it would never have been fair to _anyone_, what she made you do.”

Whatever he thought he would get out of this impromptu speech about morals and whatnot, it certainly isn’t getting a lapful of crying Guardian in return. Meera’s arms are around his neck and her legs around his hips in and instant as she buries her face in the crook of his neck and lets out a sob that has her entire body convulsing. Cayde doesn’t say another word—to be perfectly honest here, then he’s said more than _plenty_—and instead wraps his arms around her in return.

“You can’t give more than yourself,” he mutters into her mess of curling hair, voicebox making whirrs in the back of his throat. “Hell, even _that_ is more than I’d ever feel comfortable asking of you.”

“It’s never stopped the Vanguard before,” she hiccups in response and draws back.

Her eyes are rimmed with red and there are teartracks down her cheeks, but Cayde has never found her more beautiful than she is now.

It’s instinctual, but he leans in to kiss her. Meera lets out a noise of surprise but her lips open willingly nonetheless. His hands drift down from her shoulders to the small of her back and finally come to a stop on her hips as he pulls her closer. Only when it becomes absolutely necessary for her to breathe again does he draw back, and even then it is only enough for her to breathe, but not far enough for the two of them to separate more than they need to.

“The things that you’ve done,” he breathes and nudges at her nose with the raised metal bump between his eyes. “I’ll be honest and say that it straight up _terrifies_ me when I think about all the shit that you’ve emerged victorious from. But… if I could ever make it so that you would never have to be as scared as you were back there on Mars, if I had that choice, you need to know that I’d do it in a heartbeat. Fuck the protocols that I’d be breaking, I know enough about the coding from the Tower to effectively go dark out there among the stars for _decades_.”

“That…” she mumbles and leans in to press her lips against his. “Was a _terrible_ peptalk.”

“Oh shush, I’m busy kissing my favorite subordinate.”

“You are a horrible superior, too,” she tries to joke and Cayde can’t help but snort at her ridiculously botched attempt at lightening the mood.

“I will have you know that I am an _excellent _superior, thank you very much,” Cayde sniffs delicately as he secures his grip around her hips and stands. “Now, I have a Guardian to put to bed, if you don’t mind.”

She laughs and it’s a wobbly, tiny thing but it’s a laugh all the same and Cayde can’t quite stop the grin on his face.

But, y’know, he really does have to put her to sleep. He knows for a fact that both of them have the early shift tomorrow.


End file.
